Soon no more Holocaust survivors will be alive, and our duty of remembering and understanding increases. This means, among other things, that we must face the uncomfortable truths about human nature that Auschwitz symbolizes.

It has been nearly one hundred years since April 24, 1915 -- the infamous day when Armenian intellectuals of the Ottoman Empire were rounded up in the dead of night and sent to be executed in inland concentration camps in Ayash and Chankari.

The UN Security Council is the only UN body with real power and may influence positively the course of events when the 15 members agree on a course of action. In 1999 the Council acted swiftly and effectively in ending widespread violence and destruction in my country.

Survivors of genocide have specific needs that are different than others who experienced conflict and war, especially in Rwanda. The genocide in Rwanda was intimate which makes the scars deeper and the recovery much harder, and it is time that the world recognizes this fact.

The advance of ISIS in Syria and Iraq has all but wiped out some of the most ancient Christian communities. Some of the most important early Christian manuscripts which resided in monasteries there have been burned.

What Rwanda needs is education for peace and conflict resolution. Such education requires equal access for all, serious teaching of history, and respect for critical thinking and intellectual freedom, especially regarding history and identity.

It's tremendously hard to believe that two decades have passed since the genocide in Rwanda. This is the topic of conversation with a friend named Clemantine Wamariya one recent afternoon in San Francisco.

Looking across the colonial and post-colonial periods, there are deep and troubling continuities. In addition to ongoing problems of differential access to education, we see divisive social processes of mandatory categorization and systematic group stigmatization.

No sooner had I returned from the twentieth anniversary commemorations of the Rwandan genocide in Kigali than I saw Howard French's assault on the man universally credited with stopping the mass killings, President Paul Kagame.

What were all of those screams I heard throughout the night? What would happen now that the president was dead? I was benumbed with fright, but I made it to the gate. I had to know what was left of our neighborhood.

It was not without pleasure that I read Renaud Girard most recent book, Le monde en marche, which collects the best of the chronicles and reports that have appeared in recent years in Le Figaro. I swear. I protest. About Rwanda, I believe the opposite of what Girard writes. But I lap it up.

While we may never understand the full truth and be able to right all wrongs, the dangers of the international community standing behind a singular narrative of the genocide can be seen in the ongoing crisis of Rwandan refugees.

The objects were picked on the basis of their use to the young girls in their daily lives and conducted in different provinces of Rwanda. It revealed that the majority of the girls picked the sewing machine over the other objects.

The unique trauma rape victims endured, the horrors, impacts them to this day. While a massacre affects all survivors, consequences for Rwandan women is compounded through lasting impact of sexual violence.